


Light your tinsel moon

by musicforswimming



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alcohol, Blindness, F/M, PWP, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, space magic made them do it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-27
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2019-02-22 18:06:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,398
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13172349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicforswimming/pseuds/musicforswimming
Summary: A mysterious phenomenon temporarily takes out the eyesight of Discovery's human crew. Everyone is looking for ways to burn off energy; Lorca and Burnham find a certain amount of freedom in the circumstances.





	Light your tinsel moon

**Author's Note:**

> Initially written for the ST:Disco kinkmeme at [blackalert](http://blackalert.dreamwidth.org), off the prompt "Burnham/Lorca, darkness", but it kinda got away from me. The title is from Dorothy Parker's "August".

They were hit not far from Starbase 26 — some sort of energy pulse. Whatever it was, it took out the eyesight of nearly every human on the ship. _Nearly_ — "I never thought I'd be so grateful for this," Detmer said, a little tartly, as she guided Burnham to the lift, and there was the sound of skin tapping softly on something metallic; Detmer's finger on her headset. "I suppose I ought to thank you. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed woman is queen, after all."

"I appreciate the help, Your Majesty," Burnham said. She thought she heard Detmer stifle a laugh.

Medical believed it was a temporary effect and would wear off naturally within a week, but they were to report to Starbase 26, still three days away, nonetheless. Sickbay had a dozen cranial sets, "And it's unusual," Culber said, "that we have that many. They're only meant for use during recovery from more minor injuries and to stabilize major ones during triage and transport to a larger facility. Fairly extensive calibration is required from person to person, besides, so I wouldn't recommend sharing, as the necessary calibrations would place far too much strain on the processors. Between the humans with extant vision augmentation and the non-humans, these will bring us up to about a third of the crew, enough to get us to the base."

It went without saying that Michael Burnham was not considered essential enough to require one of the cranial sets. Not that she was especially sorry — even when properly calibrated, the temporary headsets took a great deal of adjustment, or so she understood. It wasn't "seeing" in the standard sense of the term.

Fortunately, species who operated outside of the human-visible spectrum, and humans and non-humans alike who required augmentative or assistive technology, were common enough in Starfleet that basic tasks were still manageable. Standard-issue communicators, with a few setting adjustments, could use gentle auditory/tactile feedback. Tell the computer you were going to the mess hall, and gentle pulses and beeps would get you there in only a little more time than usual. Even those of them who weren't equipped to perform their standard duties would be just fine.

More than fine, in a lot of cases. Which is to say, it didn't take long for the first Darkness Party to pop up.

"Come onnnnnn," Tilly said, fishing through her clothes.

"Why are you spending so much time picking an outfit?" Michael asked. "No one's going to see your clothes. Well, almost no one, since the few who _could_ see them, at this point, are for the most part either on duty or resting up for their next shift."

"Yeah," Tilly said. It seemed she had settled on something, because she sounded like she was folding her things back up as best she was able. "But if things go well, somebody's gonna feel them. And, I repeat, _come onnnnnn_."

"I'm good, thanks," she said, laughing, and Tilly sighed, and only a few minutes after she left her communicator began to buzz.

"Burnham?"

"Captain," she said, grabbing it, instinctively; she'd placed it in the same spot in her belt, slung next to the bed, and positioned the belt so that her communicator was immediately available, far too many times for mere loss of vision to impede her. "Yes. Is something wrong?"

"Not at all, Burnham. I'm just wondering if you're as bored as I am."

Even knowing she wouldn't see anything, she blinked, hard, and turned her head towards the corners of the room, wondering why the hell he would be watching security footage, why the hell he would be watching security footage of _her_ — "Is this a trick question, sir?"

He laughed, not hard, just a chuckle, warm and soft and slow, and then said, "No, Burnham. No trick. But if, like me, you can't think of anything better to do, I wouldn't mind some company."

It wasn't a question, but somehow that, too, seemed like a trick question. After a moment, though, because really, it provided a puzzle that _was_ , in fact, much better than anything else she could think of to do, she pulled her boots back on and headed out.

 

He just wanted to drink, as it turned out. He wasn't _drunk_ , she could tell, even blind; he just...wanted company, it would seem.

"I've tried those headsets, and the headaches — well, Saru's not affected, and we're taking the safest route back anyway. Like I said, if you're as bored as I am..."

"I think I might just be," Michael admitted, making her way, carefully, toward his voice. He caught her hand as she was trying to feel her way, but only guided it to the back of the couch where he sat, so that she could move around it and settle down at the other end.

"Here," he said, pressing a bottle into her hand, and she couldn't help, without sight to steady her arm by, being aware of his fingertips, of their warmth against her own.

Her first sip was cautious; the bottle was square below its round neck so probably not wine, maybe just beer or something, but without him telling her just _what_ it was or being able to see for herself — and, hm, as she raised the bottle to her lips, it didn't _smell_ like something lighter than wine — it was best to be careful. She took a cautious sip, felt it burn its way down her throat (but not _too_ harshly, compared to some things she'd drunk), took another, smaller sip, and then nudged him with the bottle, passed it back into his hand.

And then she heard him shake it, slightly. "This still feels the same. Did you have _any_?" he asked

"Vulcans don't drink," she said. "My mother would have a glass of port now and then. On special occasions, my father would join her, and even my brother and I might occasionally be given a glass with dinner. If other humans were visiting, she might have wine with the meal, or brandy before. But until I joined Starfleet, I'd never had anything stronger, or more than one glass to accompany a meal."

"Have you ever been drunk at all?"

"I have, in fact," she admitted. "Well. Relative to my own experience, anyway."

She heard him snort. "Sounds like that's not saying much, if you'll forgive me. Drink."

"No forgiveness necessary, as you're not wrong. In my defense, however," she felt compelled to point out, as he shoved the bottle back at her, "Vulcan port is very strong. A small glass goes a long way for humans. Mother always watered hers, and on those special occasions, as a teenager, mine was watered even further. My brother's too, though less so, since he was half-Vulcan, and his system could handle it better. At least as well as an adult human, anyway."

"It's not about the quantity," he said, with a chuckle. "It's about the quality. Of the experience, I mean. If you'd ever been good and drunk, you'd know that."

"I told you, sir, I _have_ been drunk. Relatively speaking."

But she took a drink anyway. Not as large as he was expecting, however, which he noticed, because he said, "That didn't sound like much of a drink, Burnham. That sounded like a sip. A very dainty sip."

"'Dainty'?" she repeated, laughing. "Sir, perhaps you've had enough already."

"Not in the least, Burnham. All right, 'dainty' isn't quite right. 'Elegant', let's say."

"If your goal was to insult me, Captain, and thereby, I assume, shame me into drinking more, perhaps you ought to have stuck with 'dainty'. 'Elegant' is nearly a compliment."

"Nonsense," he said, "that's just saying the truth. Everything you do is elegant...very Vulcan," he added, as if it were an afterthought, except that that was the first time that he put his hand on her leg.

In response, she picked up the bottle again and handed it to him, and after a moment, he removed his hand from her leg and took it. So the touch was an accident, she assumed. Or else, at most, a gesture of camaraderie. He had drunk more than she had, besides. Not to say he was incapacitated; his tolerance was higher than her own, having had more experience drinking to start with, as they'd just established. He was quite coherent, no slurring or losing the thread of their conversation. No, he was just...comfortable. That was a suitable word for it.

And _she_ was, as she tended to do, overthinking things.

Because yes, naturally she'd _thought_ about it. She'd usually dated other officers, if you could it dating when it mostly consisted of long-distance calls and the occasional miraculously coinciding shore leave. Nothing ever came of the relationships, but that was irrelevant; the point was that, looking at her admittedly unremarkable relationship history, a pattern emerged: other officers, and most of those command track besides. Well, a captain checked that box quite nicely.

More than that, though — for better or worse, he was the first person in the better part of a year who'd looked at her as something other than _The_ Michael Burnham. The Mutineer Michael Burnham. The Traitor Michael Burnham. He was the first person who'd looked at her the way people did before the Binary Stars. He was the first person to speak with her...casually. Respectfully, certainly, but more than that, for "respect" implied a distance that wasn't always there in the way he addressed her. "Warmly", perhaps, was accurate. Even — on occasion — "intimately".

Given all of which, it was entirely logical, in terms of human emotional processes, that she might feel some attraction to him. He was the first in months to treat her as one more member of the crew, the first to remark on her abilities as if they were merely evidence that she was a fine officer, rather than surprising revelations, evidence that she was somehow, miraculously, still loyal, still working for the good of Starfleet. So, insofar as logic was applicable to human emotional processes (which, frankly, it was, despite what some Vulcans might say; that was the entire point of the field of psychiatry, for one thing, not to mention the entire Kir'Shara — after all, if emotion could not be predicted, could not be, at some level, if not logical, then _predictable_ reactions to outside stimuli, equal and opposite reactions to external actions — that seemed, to her, to suggest that yes, logic _was_ applicable to such), it was entirely logical, then, that she would feel particularly drawn to him. He had treated her, spoken to her, with that respect, that warmth, that intimacy, that _humanity_ that she hadn't been accorded in some time...and, yes, all right, she'd previously dated other officers, so as Tilly would say, he was, arguably, her 'type'.

All of which was to say that the first time he put his hand on her leg, she assumed that it was just wishful thinking on her part.

He'd had more to drink than her, the two of them were in more casual circumstances, and such a touch could mean nearly anything. It was her knee, really, and such touches were entirely common among platonic friends. Perhaps it took him a moment after she pushed the bottle to him for him to take it, so that his hand stayed there a second or so _longer_ than might be normal as a gesture of affection — but then, he'd had more to drink. He might not be drunk, but that wasn't to say that his reaction times hadn't already been slightly affected.

She was imagining things. And her thoughts were going in circles besides. Perhaps she _did_ need more to drink.

A few minutes later, she realized suddenly that his hand was on her leg again. She couldn't have said, precisely, when it landed there, as a matter of fact. And that time, she might have moved it, but for some reason she didn't. She'd had a little more to drink herself, and he'd even stopped teasing her about her cautious rate of imbibing, and the thought struck her that — well.

Well, if she wasn't imagining things, if he _was_ flirting, she could certainly use the practice.

"Why, Burnham," he said, when she passed the bottle back to him this time, "that almost sounded like a proper _drink._ "

"As I said," she said once more, "I _have_ been drunk. I may have been raised Vulcan, but I've been Starfleet for a long time, and I _am_ human."

"Yes, you are," he said. "So tell me about it, then. I take it the first time you got good and hammered was...what, your first posting, then?"

"Relatively speaking," she said. "Yes. There's not much to tell. Do you remember the first time _you_ got 'good and hammered', sir?"

"Stop calling me that," the Captain complained, and she felt him shift, heard the soft _plink_ of metal on glass, and realized, somehow, immediately, that he'd taken off his badge. "This is supposed to be casual, remember?"

"I do," she said, "and I remember you asked me about the first time I was drunk, and then I asked if you remembered the first time _you_ were drunk. I might almost say, Capt — I might almost say," she said, correcting herself, "that you were avoiding the question. What did you do, then?"

"You damn Vulcans," he grumbled.

"I'm human, remember?" she said.

"Not when it's least convenient, apparently," he said. "But all right, I take your point. The first time I was properly drunk — oh, god, it was before the Academy, though. At this point, I'm not sure if I should gloat about that to you or you should gloat about it to me." A pause, another shift, as he took the bottle from her and had another drink. "Well, fine, you're right, there's not much to talk about, but yours was more recent, at least, so I'd think you'd remember a little more."

"That's sort of the opposite of the point, though, isn't it?" she asked, as he shoved the bottle back into her hand.

"Yes," he said, "I suppose you've got something there, Michael."

The sound of her first name in his mouth took her off-guard, somehow, so that the scotch seemed to burn a little more, as if she were drinking it anew. Or maybe it wasn't his use of her first name; maybe it was that, for the third time, his hand was on her leg. _Oh, it wasn't an accident,_ some part of her marveled, even as he was taking the bottle from her with his other hand, so that the hand on her leg _stayed_ there.

And when he took the bottle — but was that really the right way to phrase it? That he was merely taking the bottle as she passed it to him? Because he _held onto it_ , his fingers draping over hers, for some moments, and even accounting for alcohol's effects on human reaction times, really, it didn't take that long to pass a bottle to someone.

One might almost conclude that he was _lingering_. That he was looking for excuses to touch her.

"Do you — " she began, and then wasn't sure how to continue, because — well, he must realize, mustn't he? Of course he'd know the difference between her leg and his own, between her leg and the couch. He'd have to be far drunker than he was not to, and there would most certainly be other signs of such a state of inebriation.

So, really, the only reason to speak up was if she objected...and she wasn't certain that she _did_ object. Indeed, she was increasingly certain that she very much did _not_ object.

He didn't say anything else, didn't move his hand, but didn't _re_ move it, either. Michael supposed that he had drawn the same conclusion she did, or rather, that he guessed the conclusions that she was drawing — namely, that he was quite aware of what he was doing, so if she spoke up, it would be to object.

The reasonable conclusion, therefore, was that with his silence, he was offering her an out.

"The thing about this," he said at last, when she hadn't said anything, "it seems to me, this could be an opportunity."

"Capt — uh. That is — sorry?" she asked, and he sighed, and his thumb moved just slightly on her leg as he finally released her hand, taking the bottle. Only rather than hearing him drink, feeling the by-now-familiar motion of him lifting the bottle to his mouth, she felt him shift, put the bottle down on the table before them.

"If a captain knew for sure it was a member of their crew they were with, or if that crew member knew it was their captain, that might be — problematic, let's say. Not necessarily insurmountable — such things do happen — but there would be far more in the way of protocol involved. Hell, it's hard to say which would be more complicated, a serious relationship or something more casual. Assuming that said crew member consented, ensuring that that consent was meaningful, given the power differential, would still require a great deal of care, to say the least. But if said captain and said crew member couldn't be _entirely_ sure of one another's identities — if they couldn't, say, identify each other by sight..."

He trailed off, in what she could tell was meant to be a suggestive manner, a thought for her to finish, but she didn't do so right away, for she was not entirely certain whether that was an encouragement or a discouragement. When it came to matters of consent, though, it was always best to err on the side of caution, so after a moment, she said, "There would, of course, be other ways to verify identity in...such a situation. Vocal identification, breath prints, fingerprints — indeed, as in the case of certain phenomena recently observed by a Starfleet vessel, if their visual impairment were strictly neurological, rather than the result of any change to the anatomy of their eyes, even a retinal scan —  "

" _But_ ," he said, "if we, or, to keep it in the realm of hypotheticals, that captain and his — or her — crew member, if _they_ were completely certain of one another's identity, I think, under the circumstances, they might be obliged to stop. Again, the possibility that the captain is abusing his — or her — position...well, however cavalier some might consider that captain on certain other matters, let's just take it as a given that a consenting adult partner is a must for him or her."

"To be sure," she said, slowly. "Even if that hypothetical captain's hypothetical crew member were to give her — or his — consent, the extent to which said consent might be meaningful..."

"Yes, that's precisely the concern," he agreed. "But of course, in a situation where those hypothetical people weren't _completely_ certain of one another's identities..."

Something about the whole situation just struck her, then, as utterly ridiculous, and she burst out laughing. "So many hypotheticals," she said. "'I know who I _was_ when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.'"

He laughed, too, in a pleasant surprise. "I beg your pardon?"

She shook her head, then, remembering that he couldn't see it, she said, "It's just something from a book my mother used to read to us. Lewis Carroll."

"Carroll," he repeated, sounding a little surprised. "Huh. Not what I would have expected."

"Yes, well," she said. "I'm not what a lot of people expected, it would seem."

Another moment passed in the darkness. If the sound of his breath suddenly seemed very loud, the sound of her heart suddenly seemed even louder. She took a deep breath, then, hoping with all her might that she had understood, she turned, leaning in to kiss him — and, mercifully, he met her halfway, his mouth already hot on hers almost before she could realize what she'd done, what either of them had done.

"Sir," she murmured, and then he hushed her, kissing her again, pulling her so that she was, somehow, settling into his lap — "I mean — that is — this doesn't seem like the most comfortable of places for this. Not that I object, precisely," she added, becoming aware of his hand, hot around the back of her neck, pulling her back down, making it easier for her to keep kissing him. "Not to the theory, if I understand the theory properly."

"From what I can tell, you're crystal-clear on it," he said, and this time, when he paused so she could kiss him again, he sucked at her lower lip, just a little. "I think we're very much on the same page, yes."

"Well, I'm glad of that, at least — " Her hands were buried in his hair, she noticed. "But the execution — that is, if anything _more_ were in order..."

"Oh," he said, barely more than a hot breath against her mouth, and then she felt him smile a little, "Yeah, these damn couches — "

"They're terrible, right?" she asked, recalling when she had one of her own, but this time, the pang she'd become accustomed to was more distant, almost lost beneath something simpler, more immediate, something heavy and dense and warm. Then both of them were laughing, suddenly, just a little, as she slid to her feet again, keeping one of her hands twined with his to make sure he understood that she wasn't leaving.

He was surprisingly gentle as he guided her from the couch over to his bed. It couldn't be that far; even a captain's quarters weren't exactly luxurious, they only seemed so in comparison to everyone else's. But in these strange and curious circumstances, it might have taken hours, she was so aware of everything, so cautious in the darkness and the unfamiliar quarters and with another body so close to her own. He was careful, kept the hand she wasn't holding at the small of her back — almost tender. They were moving like dancers for a moment, she thought, and the mental image made her smile.

"You're very skilled at this. Have you done this often?" she asked, and heard him laugh, sort of, more an extra rush of hot breath near her face.

"Occasionally. Once or twice. Not nearly as often as I should have, not in the past — oh, how long is it, now, since — well, since a person, who may or may not be here right now, came on board?"

She laughed then, at that, as she stumbled backward onto the bed, landed, sitting, so that he had to bend down to kiss her again. "You," she said after another few moments, "are downright dangerous...whoever you might or might not be _,_ " she added, and was rewarded when he laughed again, out loud this time. One of them, at some point, she couldn't have said which, had gotten her jacket half-unzipped, she realized, as one of his hands slipped inside to cup her right breast, and his mouth went back onto hers, and she laid back and he slid along atop her.

"God," he murmured, his mouth leaving hers reluctantly, it seemed, pressing one last little kiss there before continuing down to her throat, along the line of her collarbone. Then, a little quieter, and yet somehow a little stronger, "God. God _damn_."

"I — yes, I would have to concur with the sentiment," she managed, as he tugged the zipper on her top down the rest of the way, and she felt his warm mouth, with a hint of stubble — of course, he wouldn't be able to shave — just above the cup of her bra on the other breast. "Yes," she said again, and then, barely, hardly able to recognize the voice as her own, "oh, _fuck_."

She pushed him, slightly, just enough to give her room to shrug out of her jacket, and the shirt below it, and then suddenly his hands were around her back, at the clasp of her bra, even as she was tugging at his collar in turn, pulling _his_ zipper down. She barely had time to spread her hands across his stomach, slip them up over his and feel the heat of him even through his shirt before he was up again, barely, just enough to tug her bra off and drop it on the ground, where, judging by the sound of fabric hitting fabric, it was close enough to her top that she'd be able to dress herself properly the next morning. So long as she could tell her top from his, at any rate, she reflected, tugging at his collar again, forcing him to shrug out of his top in turn.

"Fuck, Burnham," he murmured, barely above a breath, as he wrapped his arms around her waist again.

 _You damn Vulcans,_ she heard him, as loud as if he were only speaking it now, so that she was laughing as she reminded him, "Or _whomever_ you might be with."

He laughed too, but there was something more ragged in it this time. His arms went around her waist again, he was lifting her, just a little, positioning her a little more comfortably along the bed, and then his hands were tracing from the small of her back along the curve of her waist, her hips, to the clasp of her pants. She raised her hips, scooting a little further back along the bed as she did, let him tug them off, and when they caught around her boots, both of them ended up laughing, and she couldn't have said for sure whether she kicked them off, or he pulled them off. Either way, then he was kissing her again, his hands settled on the bones of her hips as if there were no more natural place for them to be, the tips of his little fingers sliding along underneath the band of her underwear.

She lifted herself up slightly, reaching for his shirt, but he caught her hands in his first, squeezed them, just a little, and she wondered for a moment until he let go and settled onto the bed next to her. She heard the sounds of his own boots coming off, but before stripping down the rest of the way he was kissing her again. _Senseless, extremely impractical,_ she thought, _it'll just make more work later..._ but another part of her was thrilled by it, by the notion that he couldn't keep his hands off of her for long enough to undress all at once.

Besides, that extra work was not at all unpleasant. She slipped her hands under his shirt this time, felt his skin for herself, the dusted trail of soft hair that led up from his navel. One of her nails caught for a moment, just slightly, on a nipple, and he hissed into her mouth, just a little, just enough to make her wonder if doing it again would yield similar results. In the interest of exploration, she pinched his other nipple, just a little, and was rewarded with a low _sound_ — not a moan, not loud enough for that, just barely a grunt — and a tightening of his own hands on her breasts, as if he were in need of some support.

"Fuck," he breathed again, his breath hot on her ear, before biting at the lobe of it. She couldn't be sure, bone conduction of sound making one's voice just slightly different from sound heard through the air, but she thought the noise she made at that might have been similar to his own just moments before. His hands had moved to her thighs, she noticed vaguely, and his mouth was just at the jugular notch between her clavicles, and then, smooth as silk, it was between her legs, warm and wet as she was herself.

(One of them had taken off her underwear, she deduced, since his mouth was on naked skin rather than cloth, but hell if she could remember which one of them it was, or when.)

"Oh," she managed, as his tongue moved on her, in her. She wanted to say more, to be more clear, to make it obvious that yes, she very much approved, very much consented, very much enjoyed this, but she had never been good at this. Vulcans had little in the way of exclamations, to say nothing of curses, and it always made her feel a little self-conscious during sex. Lorca (or, she reminded herself, whoever it _might_ be, because yes, certainly, there was absolutely plausible deniability here, no question!) didn't seem to mind, though. Her movements were enough, perhaps, or so she assumed, the way her hips might jerk now and again. And then there were the noises each of them were making — her own low grunts, barely audible, but also, surprisingly, his own, the soft little noises of pleasure, of hunger, like hers, which she could hear in the pressing silence of the room, even from so far away — so far as between her thighs, which was a hell of a distance when all of her awareness was reduced to her body, to what she could feel, what she could sense without the sight of the endless void outside the window.

Her hand was in his hair, she noticed, mostly because she was pulling at him, pulling him up, back to her mouth, to give her mouth something to do in kissing him. She had no other use for it, not with him down there, and needed to do something with it. Her hands found their way down his body, beneath his underwear — because, appallingly, he was still wearing something — and she was fumbling at him as best she could, given how close they were, how little room her hands had to move. But she was rewarded for it nonetheless with what she could only have called a moan inside of her mouth, another, whispered, "fuck, Burnham, _fuck_ yes." She would have said something else about that, made some other joke, some other comment to remind him that they were supposed to have (some ridiculous parody of) plausible deniability but there was too much _sensation_ for that just now, her mouth on his throat as one of his hands went back to her breast and one of hers was on his back and and and...

Which of them managed it, in the end, she couldn't have said — a dual effort, perhaps, with both of them so drunk on warmth and need that she couldn't have said whether he managed to get himself into her or she managed to get him inside of herself. At any rate, it was thoroughly satisfying when they _did_ manage it, certainly for her, and, judging by the sounds he made, for him as well. She'd wound up on top of him at some point, his hands on her waist and hers on his shoulders. But that wasn't to say she was doing all the work now — particularly not when he moved one of his hands down a little further, managing to get at her clit with his thumb, or at least close enough to create pressure, to add to her sensation, her pleasure.

The universe was still smaller now, or at least it felt that way. Still, though she knew it was coming, it was a little startling when it happened, when that cresting wave inside of her finally broke. Hardly a bad surprise, but still, unexpected. She felt her muscles fluttering about him, and it was somehow less surprising when his orgasm came soon after her own. In the aftermath, neither of them moved right away, only caught their breath, readjusted, gathered themselves.

At last, she rolled off of him, flopping down onto the bed next to him. "I can head back soon," she offered.

He snorted. "I'm not _that_ cutthroat. I invited you up here because I hoped we'd _both_ enjoy ourselves, Burnham."

"Or whoever — " she began, but he cut her off, laughing.

"Yeah, or _whoever_ I might be with," he said, settling down beside her, one hand just close enough to her arm to be pleasant without it being too much, too much heat or too much contact or too much anything.

 

It took a moment, the next morning, in that halfway zone between sleep and true wakefulness, to place what was different. Not wrong, she knew that much. But...different. Out of place. Out of the ordinary. She didn't hear Tilly's soft snoring, and — and yes, there, that was definitely another body next to hers, a body which was very much _not_ Tilly's.

"You awake?" he murmured, and she started, and he laughed a little, gently. "Whoa. My mistake, didn't mean to startle you. Figured you knew I was awake already, too."

She didn't laugh, quite, but she hoped he could hear that she was smiling, at least. "I only just woke. Perhaps if I'd been awake before you, I could have determined the difference between your breathing patterns while sleeping and while awake, but — no. No, I did not know. But I do now, obviously," she added, and suddenly both of them were laughing, and she couldn't quite have said why. Only — well, she was in an absurdly, illogically good mood.

"Could there have been some emotional effect as well?" she wondered, after her laughter faded. "From the pulse, I mean. There was no reason for me to find _that_ funny."

"Oh, I hope not," he said. "I'd much rather think we just put each other in a good mood, wouldn't you?"

"Well, certainly, that's the preferable explanation," she said. "And under normal circumstances, I'd be satisfied with putting it down to that. But given that these are _not_ normal circumstances — namely, that there's already been one very obvious neurological effect — I dare say further such effects aren't out of the question. I suppose we might check with Sickbay..."

"Well, yes, we _might_ ," he said, as one of his hands ran along her thigh. "I suppose eventually we should, sure, but if it's all been fine this long..." One finger slipped inside of her, and as if he'd heard her smiling, he pressed a kiss at the corner of her mouth, the far corner her smile had stretched to reach.

"Yes," she agreed, as he rolled on top of her, and she reached down between them to grasp him, running her thumb along his tip. "Yes, I suppose a little longer wouldn't hurt," she said, helping to guide him in.

It was quicker that time, but that was alright. Something — something bright, comfortable, familiar, perfect for the morning. Before they became too self-conscious about their breath or something. It was just — a sweet ending, something entirely enjoyable.

It was Burnham, perhaps not surprisingly, who broke the enjoyable silence afterward. "Sorry, but I really need to use the toilet," she said, laughing already as she finished, so that he snorted a little too.

"Yeah, fair enough," he said, but pulled her back down, just for a moment, for a quick kiss, first to her mouth and then, as she made to straighten, to her cheek, her earlobe. She could almost feel him smiling as she dressed again, or maybe that was just her.

"I'm going to go to Sickbay, too," she said, after she'd stopped in his private bathroom long enough to relieve herself; long enough to make sure, feeling the seams, that she was wearing her jacket right-side-out. "Just to make sure. In case you thought you were calling my bluff," she added, and hoped that he heard her smiling, as she said that, and then added, for some mysterious reason, "Sir."

"Or whomever you might have spent the night with," came the response from the vicinity of the bed — he was moving, she thought, by the slight changes in his voice; she assumed he was dressing too.

"Indeed," she concurred, and lingered, just for a moment, before leaving.

"Sickbay," she said to her communicator, as soon as the door closed behind her.

 

Hyperthymia, she discovered, when she finally managed to pull herself out of bed, dress herself, and get to Sickbay, was _not_ a likely side effect. Additionally, she found that they were quite busy in Sickbay, owing to no fewer than seven injuries sustained in semi-inebriated falls from unfamiliar beds.

"Well, at least _that_ wasn't a possibility," she muttered to herself, and heard Culber, even harried as he was, stop what he was doing.

"Burnham?" he asked, and she grinned, even laughed a little.

"Nothing," she said. "Nothing out of the ordinary, anyway, it would seem. Mood-wise, that is."

"I see," he said, and she was fairly certain she could hear something like laughter in his voice. "Well. Be careful of falls from unfamiliar beds, then."

Fortunately, no one could see her blush, and she managed to refrain from saying that the bed in question was large enough that _that_ , at least, wouldn't be an issue.

 

It was several days later that their off shifts coincided once more — well, all right, they'd coincided once or twice before that, but there'd been paperwork, there'd been checkups, there'd been all sorts of things just for her, never mind what the captain might be dealing with.

And, of course, she'd been avoiding him outside of on-duty hours.

That was foolish, of course. He — _they_ — had explicitly set out for there to be plausible deniability. However generous "plausible" might be as a descriptor.

At any rate, it was ten days after that she finally took a deep breath, and returned to his quarters.

"Come in," he said, after a moment — _after just long enough,_ something in her observed, _that he could determine who's outside his door_.

The light was dim when she entered, and he was sitting on the couch — ah, yes, that was the couch, back to the door, and there, there was the bed, was it really such a short distance between them? It felt so much longer...

"Can I help you, Burnham?" he asked.

"Perhaps," she said. "Only — hm. The light seems a bit bright, doesn't it?"

"I was just thinking that," he said. The last thing she saw, before the darkness descended once more, was his smile.


End file.
